I Can Recommend the ‘ash’ Sir ! –

Geraldton Advertiser 9 February 1900, page 4 Bungarra.

There was a waiter at a Nannine pub on the Murchison, who always made the most of scant materials for his landlord’s guests. The Perth speculator just off the coach was put down in a galvanised iron hothouse, like a Russian steam bath, and had, his soup of yesterday’s scraps and slaughterhouse bones, served up with all the pomp and circumstance of the Victoria Cafe in Melbourne. After picking out the flies and other fauna indigenous to the locality, and cooling the oleaginous mass with the constant drip of frontal perspiration from his brow, the attendant, whose feet were blistered and bandaged in discarded haberdashery, moistened by water to keep down their temperature, would inquire unctuously,

“Corned beef or ‘ash, sir?  I can recommend the ‘ash”

And ‘ash it was, apparently compounded of battery tailings and offal. The next course was duff, highly mineralized and mostly refractory. The sympathetic waiter would ask ‘Are you hungry, sir?” and on an affirmative, would howl through a hole in the side of the humpy at the cook.

“One plum duff for a gent with a happetite”

Remember your own hungry mother and damn the expense. This alone was embarrassing enough, and the whole table smiled audibly as the concentrated abomination, foetid and smoking, was placed under the nose of the visitor. After washing the whole lot down with a rusty pannikin of brackish tea, the invariable question with the most insinuating of smiles was forthcoming.

“Ave you fared sumptuously, sir ?”

Five bob as a tip, and a hasty retreat, seemed about the best way out of it, as a drop of ten degrees took you from the hash house inferno into the God-given, if sudorific blaze of a goldfields noonday sun. Then the coach resumed its journey and the diner sat and developed the embryo of a noble indigestion destined, to add to the income of both doctor and chemist at the next town. Meanwhile, the landlord and waiter condoled with each other that;

“There is no satisfying these ‘ere city blokes whatever with their airs and graces. Blast ’em, lets ‘ave a drink.”

And the earth continued to revolve on its own axle according to the laws and constitution of the Forrest Government and the most approved ethics of Groperdom, forever and ever, amen!

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Moya Sharp

Owner at Outback Family History

My name is Moya Sharp, I live in Kalgoorlie Western Australia and have worked most of my adult life in the history/museum industry. I have been passionate about history for as long as I can remember and in particular the history of my adopted home the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia. Through my website I am committed to providing as many records and photographs free to any one who is interested in the family and local history of the region.

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